In Baltimore and Elsewhere, It’s the Culture that Can Make or Break a Cycle of Poverty

National Review ^ | 5/6/2015 | Jonah Goldberg

[Servant of the Cross]

Neighborhoods matter.

That’s the upshot of two fascinating new studies from Harvard economist Raj Chetty and his colleagues. In the 1990s, the federal government launched an experiment, called the Moving to Opportunity project. It created a lottery for housing vouchers that would allow the winners to move out of high-poverty neighborhoods into low-poverty ones.

The project’s initial findings were a disappointment for people — like me — who argue that culture matters quite a lot. It did find that neighborhood poverty was a big factor in determining economic mobility, but researchers saw little evidence that getting poor people out of poor communities and into thriving ones helped them all that much.

But Chetty et al. revisited the data, looking at how a move affected young children. The changes were enormous. The earlier kids got out of impoverished neighborhoods, the better they did over their lifetimes.

Poor kids who left poor neighborhoods were much more likely to go to college and earn more. Chetty estimates that giving kids (age eight on average) a voucher to move into low-poverty areas increases their lifetime earnings by about $302,000. The data suggest that girls were 26 percent less likely to become single mothers.

In a larger study, Chetty and other colleagues looked at earnings data for 5 million families in the U.S. over 17 years. The findings were the same: Neighborhoods matter. A lot. Economist Justin Wolfers writes that these studies “are the most powerful demonstration yet that neighborhoods — their schools, community, neighbors, local amenities, economic opportunities and social norms — are a critical factor shaping your children’s outcomes.”

Wolfers is right to include a laundry list of possible explanations for why neighborhoods matter. The presence of economic opportunities in non-poor neighborhoods — i.e., jobs — is surely important.

[Servant of the Cross]

Break the cycle of democrat control of the inner cities. Their policies have robbed the community of its personal dignity, imposed dependency and created permanent poverty through ongoing 'hand-outs' rather than temporary "hand-ups".

[Lockbox]

So the Libs ruin a city and then move some of the losers to a hard worker’s location which will cause major problems, all to maybe save a few children!

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

If our nominee is Ted Cruz or Scott Walker, I would like him to dedicate an address to minorities during the run-up to the general election.

The purpose would be to speak the “big truth” to them, explaining what the Democraps have done to them, and will continue to do to them.

This would be good for minorities, force the Democraps to defend their turf, and gain Cruz a point or two in the general election.

[pepsionice]

It’s best to compare these inner-cities as ‘Indian-reservation-urban-areas’. The city or state government has confined these people to a tribal area. The tribe adapted and had to respect the political organization who manages the reservation. You only get ahead or ‘gifts’ by conforming to the reservation tribal rules.

[Servant of the Cross]

... Ted Cruz or Scott Walker ... dedicate an address to minorities ... to speak the “big truth” to them, explaining what the Democraps have done to them, and will continue to do to them.

So true. And they would do well to have Dr. Thomas Sowell at their side to make the case most effectively .....

We are told that such riots are a result of black poverty and white racism. But in fact — for those who still have some respect for facts — black poverty was far worse, and white racism was far worse, prior to 1960. But violent crime within black ghettos was far less.

Murder rates among black males were going down — repeat, DOWN — during the much lamented 1950s, while it went up after the much celebrated 1960s, reaching levels more than double what they had been before. Most black children were raised in two-parent families prior to the 1960s. But today the great majority of black children are raised in one-parent families.

Such trends are not unique to blacks, nor even to the United States. The welfare state has led to remarkably similar trends among the white underclass in England over the same period. Just read "Life at the Bottom," by Theodore Dalrymple, a British physician who worked in a hospital in a white slum neighborhood.

You cannot take any people, of any color, and exempt them from the requirements of civilization — including work, behavioral standards, personal responsibility and all the other basic things that the clever intelligentsia disdain — without ruinous consequences to them and to society at large.

Non-judgmental subsidies of counterproductive lifestyles are treating people as if they were livestock, to be fed and tended by others in a welfare state — and yet expecting them to develop as human beings have developed when facing the challenges of life themselves.

One key fact that keeps getting ignored is that the poverty rate among black married couples has been in single digits every year since 1994. Behavior matters and facts matter, more than the prevailing social visions or political empires built on those visions.

[The Great RJ]

What good are more federal jobs programs in places like Baltimore if the young people targeted for those jobs are barely literate,speak mainly Ebonics and have an attitude that they are always oppressed?

[Teacher317]

SHHHH!!!! If you're not black, you may NOT criticize Urban Culture...

and if you are black, they will rip you to pieces and disavow you in seconds.

[GOPJ]

The solution - - move the black underclass into white liberal elite gated communities.

Places where homes START at $500,000. If working class neighborhood do ‘some’ good - white liberal elite neighborhoods will do better.

Of course these studies never look at the negative effects on innocent working class citizens AND their children from the exposure to high crime residents. Those results would be interesting - and more likely statistically significant with upper class kids.

That's another reason to force upper class neighborhoods to socialize the underclass - easier to study the effect on THEIR children....

[ExNewsExSpook]

A lot of unanswered questions in the article: how did the program “move” poor people from bad neighborhoods to better ones? Did they follow people who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, or did researchers simply follow individuals who qualified for Section 8 housing—my guess is the latter option, not the former.

As others have observed on FR, there are tremendous problems associated with the Section 8 program. Not only does it create another expensive entitlement (giving recipients a free ride to better housing in middle class neighborhoods), it destroys the incentive for individuals to improve their lot in life. Why work hard for a good home when Uncle Sam will pay the rent check? And of course, the arrival of a Section 8 house in your neighborhood drives down property values.

Here’s a report from WFTS-TV in Tampa on who wins—and loses—in the Section 8 game:

http://www.abcactionnews.com/marketplace/law-tv/section-8-housing-destroying-home-values-and-driving-up-rental-prices

[RoosterRedux]

What good are more federal jobs programs in places like Baltimore if the young people targeted for those jobs are barely literate,speak mainly Ebonics and have an attitude that they are always oppressed?

And what good are jobs for people who are drug addicted, have absolutely no sense of right and wrong, no integrity (or even knowledge of what it might be), and do not know the difference between the truth and a lie.

[Servant of the Cross]

And what ... jobs [are there] for people who are drug addicted, have absolutely no sense of right and wrong, no integrity (or even knowledge of what it might be), and do not know the difference between the truth and a lie.

They are elected POTUS for two terms. Thank you government schools and the slim majority low information voters they have produced.

[Chewbarkah]

Did Chetty look at the effects on middle and upscale neighborhoods of having “culturally and economically deprived” persons moved into them at public expense? Do the neighborhoods deteriorate, have higher crime rates? Do home values decline? Do stores close when more residents steal or lack the income to buy very much? Does academic performance of middle class children decline? Do they have increased rates of drug use, criminal behavior, dropping out, teen pregnancy?

Growing up in better neighborhoods probably does benefit the newcomers. But it isn’t a free lunch. Who picks the winners and losers?